


The First Touch of the Light

by evadne



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Drunken Confessions, F/F, First Time, Genderswap, Post Reichenbach, References to Addiction, References to Suicide, Sexual Tension, Smut, drinking and talking, mention of past dubiously consensual kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 05:39:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evadne/pseuds/evadne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo and Sherlock drink and tell the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for series 2 of Sherlock.

They’ve never got drunk together before. Perhaps if they had, when they were still new to each other and more careful about keeping things back, this wouldn’t be happening.  
  


 

Whatever ‘this’ is. Jo isn’t actually sure yet. But she knows that it’s a bad idea, and that she likes it.

 

She and Sherlock are lying next to each other on the floor, laughing as they occasionally reach up to the arm of the sofa where their drinks are somewhat precariously balanced. Sherlock is further away from it, and every time she reaches to take a drink she leans right over Jo, her warmth momentarily everywhere.

 

Their limbs are in a decadent state of relaxed sprawling, Jo’s left leg draped over Sherlock’s right; their sides are touching. Jo’s wearing only an oversized T-shirt, in deference to the heat. Even Sherlock, who prefers to layer up, and whose pyjamas all look like suits, has succumbed enough to wear thin cotton ones instead of thick silk. If Jo looked, she could see Sherlock’s breasts rise and fall with her breathing, their shape just discernible under the cloth.

 

But she isn’t looking. And she won’t.

 

The situation is dangerous. She can feel it, in the way she always can feel danger when it’s near, her senses trying to twist her to face it (plants towards light, Sherlock Holmes towards a puzzle, and Jo towards anything that makes her heart race and her body ache with effort, and therefore, in the end, always towards Sherlock.)

 

It’s dangerous because they’re far too close and not wearing enough, and drunk, really quite drunk. Jo is slurring her words slightly; Sherlock is enunciating them even more clearly than usual, picking them out slowly and with great care. And then there’s the content of those words.

 

‘My turn,’ Sherlock says.

 

‘You need a turn?’ Jo teases. ‘Can’t you just deduce anything you want to know?’

 

‘It’s your past life I want to know about, and that far back, it’s difficult,’ Sherlock admits. ‘A hint or two wouldn’t go amiss.’

 

‘OK,’ Jo says. She doesn’t know why she’s so excited and so frightened by all the possibilities running through her mind as to what Sherlock might ask.

 

Sherlock turns her head so that she’s looking directly at Jo, and their faces are now far too close together. Jo forces herself not to swallow.

 

‘All right, I’ll be dull,’ Sherlock says. ‘First kiss.’ Then she clarifies: ‘I mean that in the – socially conventional sense. The first time you experienced a kiss with romantic or sexual import.’ (And why should Jo feel a burst of affection at that addition?)

 

‘I was seventeen,’ Jo says, and enjoys how surprised Sherlock looks. It’s not something she gets to see often. And the best part is that Sherlock is clearly relishing it too, soaking up the unusual feeling of being startled.

 

‘Quite late,’ Sherlock says. ‘Certainly later than I would have expected from you.’

 

‘Because I’m such a slag,’ Jo says, amused. Sherlock only smirks. Jo elbows her, and then regrets it; the contact lasts only a second, but it leaves tingles that echo on in her skin afterwards. Somehow, in addition to all the places of contact they already have, it’s too much.

 

‘Seventeen, at a club in Edinburgh. My brother and I went up on our own to visit our grandparents, and he wanted to go out. He had a fake I.D. already, and he got one made up for me. He was only fifteen then, but he could talk his way in anywhere, even though the I.D. barely resembled him. So he’d been clubbing before, loads of times, but I hadn’t.’

 

‘You were careful about breaking rules back then,’ Sherlock muses. ‘Obsessively so. Sometimes you still try to be, even though caution and good behaviour don’t suit you at all, but I can usually put a stop to that.’

 

‘Yeah,’ Jo says. ‘You’re a bad influence. If I hadn’t met you I’d probably be a miserable model citizen.’ (And somewhere between her brain and her mouth, the tone of that statement changed from flippant to grateful and heartfelt. God. Things she’s said to Sherlock’s grave, over a year ago now, but never to Sherlock.)

 

Sherlock’s looking away now, must have seen too much in Jo’s face in that second. Jo decides the best thing is to ignore the moment and go on with the story.

 

‘Hadley was seriously dubious about bringing me. He thought I’d be overwhelmed by a wave of guilt and –‘

 

 _Blush and stutter and give the whole game away._ Hadley’s words from back then sound loudly in her head, and with them comes a sudden sharp bitterness, too strong to come entirely from distant memory.

 

Jo swallows, and again there’s no doubt that Sherlock’s seen the thought that passed behind her eyes. For one thing, this is Sherlock, and for another, she’s looking away again. An odd new tactful habit that’s developed over the past few months, since she came back: she still sees too much, but now she stops looking afterwards. Too late, of course, every time. But she’s trying – trying quite hard to give Jo some privacy in her own head – and Jo has no idea what to make of that.

 

‘Presumably no such thing happened,’ Sherlock says, breaking the silence.

 

Jo smiles at her uncertainly, not sure if she’s being mocked. She decides she’s better off not asking. If Sherlock thinks Jo can’t be trusted to keep a poker face when it matters, that’s Sherlock’s problem, and Jo just needs to ignore it and keep telling the story. So she just says:  ‘’Course not. I just kept my head down and let Hadley do the talking, and we got in.’ She breathes out, wondering what Sherlock will make of the next bit. ‘It took about a second after that for me to realise it was a gay club.’

 

Jo studies Sherlock’s expression. Yes, she’s surprised Sherlock _again,_ and oh, she’s enjoying that far too much. She reaches up, swigs inelegantly from her wine glass, and puts it back down again. Sherlock follows suit, pushing herself up, leaning over Jo. From this angle Jo can’t see Sherlock’s fingers wrap round the stem of the glass, or her lips part around its rim, but she can see Sherlock’s throat work as she swallows. And swallows and swallows; she’s downing it, and it seems to go on forever.

 

Jo swallows too. _Keep talking,_ she tells herself. Sherlock has settled back into position, drink emptied, with an intentness in her expression that’s rapidly going to Jo’s head.

 

‘Right,’ Jo says. ‘So, I turn to Hadley and just look at him, and he looks defiant and asks if I’m uncomfortable. It’s something he used to do – was only thirteen when he came out to me, and I freaked out a bit at first – I don’t mean I got angry or anything or acted really shocked, but I kept asking if he was sure and…I dunno. I could have handled it better.’

 

‘You were only fifteen,’ Sherlock says, with what is, for her, extraordinary gentleness.

 

‘Yeah,’ Jo murmurs. ‘I guess.’ The truth is that the information had made her uneasy on a level she couldn’t identify at the time. Later, when she understood better, she’d done what she could to make it up to Hadley for letting her own insecurities affect their relationship.

 

She goes on. ‘Anyway. I stopped being like that, but Hadley was always – I don’t know, suspicious. Anxious. And he used to try and test me, push my boundaries to see what I’d do. And I knew I only had to let him down once for him to shut me out altogether. So I just said no of course not, let’s go in, and in we went.’

 

She smiles, remembering her own nervousness. ‘Actually, I was _really_ uncomfortable. There were people getting off everywhere, almost all men, but there was one girl couple near us and I couldn’t stop staring. I’d never kissed anyone –‘

 

‘That is rather the point of the story,’ Sherlock murmurs. ‘Though surprising, as I said.’

 

‘Yeah, well,’ Jo says. ‘I didn’t – I didn’t get out much, when I was a teenager.’

 

Sherlock looks keenly at her, and she forces herself not to look away. Whatever there is to see, whatever history is visible in it, Sherlock’s had years to find it out. Jo may never have spoken about it, but can she really doubt that Sherlock knows it all anyhow? Every parental vanishing trick and benzodiazepine cocktail, every assumed responsibility. Jo was raised to keep secrets and tell lies, but in 221B Baker Street the latter is pointless and the former impossible. She knows that, has known it since she and Sherlock first met. She could have run then, refused to show up at the flat and never seen the peculiar stranger again. But at the time, the thought never even crossed her mind.

 

‘Neither did I,’ Sherlock offers.

 

‘Dissecting corpses in the family crypt?’ Jo asks.

 

‘Something like that,’ Sherlock says. Her eyes are distant, and Jo wishes she could read Sherlock as well as Sherlock reads her.

 

‘This girl was looking at me,’ is all Jo actually says, and Sherlock’s expression, whatever it means, fades back into one of focused interest. ‘Short hair, dyed blonde – I can still remember exactly what she looked like. And Hadley nudged me and sent me stumbling right towards her. And she, well, she smiled, she asked if I was OK, and I said yes, and she asked if I wanted to come and dance with her for a bit.’

 

‘And you did,’ Sherlock says, softly.

 

‘Yeah, well, I was afraid it was rude not to,’ Jo says, with a slight laugh. ‘I always worried a lot about manners. And somehow I couldn’t believe she was really – um, trying it on. It just wasn’t something that could happen in the world I lived in. None of it seemed real.’

 

Sherlock smiles. Jo shrugs. ‘Then, well, she kissed me. And I remember I thought – I had some half crazed idea that I had to let her, had to kiss back – I knew Hadley’d be watching and it felt like another test.’

 

‘Oh,’ Sherlock says, sounding, unexpectedly, worried. ‘Is that – was it awful?’

 

‘No, actually,’ Jo says. ‘No. It was quite nice, really. I didn’t know what I was doing, of course, and she kept asking if I was OK. But she didn’t ask why I was so shit at it and she helped me figure out what to do. Month after that I kissed the guy I’d fancied for ages and never told him that he had a random Scottish lesbian to thank for the fact that I wasn’t completely hopeless.’

 

Sherlock laughs. Jo wonders what she makes of it. Jo dates men, and has only dated men since she left the army. At first it was because she couldn’t touch a woman without thinking of women she’d touched in Afghanistan, women she’d promised to keep in touch with but hadn’t, once she got home, been able to face speaking to. After that – well, after that there was Sherlock, and Jo had to do anything she could to separate her dates from Sherlock in her mind as much as possible. She could not have them occupy the same category. And dating only men meant that she had a secret from Sherlock, and that was something she treasured. She avoided asking herself why.

 

Sherlock is studying her. Jo keeps her face blank. At last Sherlock cracks, and asks, ‘Was that the only sexual experience you ever had with a woman?’

 

Jo smiles. ‘Uh uh,’ she says. ‘It’s my turn. You want me to answer that, you’ll have to wait.’

 

Sherlock nods. ‘What’s your question going to be, then?’

 

‘I could be uninventive and ask about your first kiss,’ Jo says.

 

‘No,’ Sherlock says, and then looks embarrassed. ‘I mean – there isn’t much to say.’

 

‘Tell me,’ Jo urges. ‘Please?’

 

Sherlock looks very unhappy for a moment and Jo opens her mouth to say that it’s all right, she’ll ask something else, but then Sherlock starts talking rapidly, looking at the ceiling. ‘If you mean – there’s the real one, I suppose, and the one I think of, myself, as the first one that really – counted. Though of course that’s according to almost entirely arbitrary and subjective standards. But frankly the conventional definition of what makes a kiss significant is no less –‘ She breaks off, takes a breath, then continues more slowly: ‘I kissed a friend of Maedrith’s. Or he kissed me. I was fourteen, he was twenty two. I told myself if I kissed back it would mean I was – anyway. I did my best. It was unpleasant.’

 

‘That doesn’t count,’ Jo says instantly, forcing herself to refrain from reaching out to grip Sherlock’s hand. ‘If you don’t want it to it doesn’t.’ She’s aware that she’s not being very eloquent, but something in Sherlock’s story has upset her badly. She says: ‘Tell me about the proper one.’

 

Sherlock looks at her. Her eyes are wide and dark in the dim light. ‘I don’t know,’ Sherlock says, at last. ‘There have been fourteen, altogether. Ten of them were the same person.’

 

‘And the first of those ten is the one you count as the proper first one,’ Jo guesses.

 

Sherlock nods. ‘The others were all before that, and they weren’t dissimilar to the first. Same motivation, same degree of enjoyment.’

 

‘So, none,’ Jo says.

 

Sherlock nods again, a sharper nod. ‘Yes. After university I set up as a private detective. I had eight years of that before I met Lestrade and began consulting work, and to this day I have no idea how I lasted that long. It was all people who thought their partners were having affairs. Shadowing and very little logic, almost nothing of any interest.’

 

Jo fails, this time, to stop herself from squeezing Sherlock’s hand. Compelled to do so by a hard burst of sympathy and pain, but it isn’t a good idea. Jo’s hand feels hot and somehow too soft, like it could melt, could mould itself to Sherlock’s hand and never detach again. She pulls it away.

 

Sherlock looks down for a moment, her face terrifyingly analytical for a moment, then up again. ‘I had one or two interesting clients. Among them was a woman called Violet Hunter. We – I solved her case within a few days and then we – well. It didn’t last long. Just a few weeks, but it – seemed to matter. At the time.’

 

‘How old were you?’ Jo asks.

 

‘Twenty five. And no,’ Sherlock adds, acerbic, ‘I haven’t kissed anyone else since, and yes, Violet is the only person I’ve had sex with, and no, you do not have my permission to comment on either of those things.’

 

Jo wants to touch Sherlock again, to bestow physical comfort on her suddenly agitated body, but – bad idea. Very bad idea. So she just nods, not daring to speak, trying to convey as much _it’s all fine_ into her expression as possible.

 

It must work, because Sherlock relaxes again, and says: ‘My turn?’

 

‘You want to go back to the question you were going to ask before?’ Jo says.

 

Sherlock doesn’t answer, but instead looks down again. Following her line of sight, Jo sees her look from her own hand to Jo’s. Jo’s stomach drops. Such a small thing to have done, to touch a friend’s hand in sympathy, but she should know better than to give her consulting detective any evidence at all to work with.

 

‘No,’ Sherlock says, moving very slightly closer. Jo forces herself not to swallow. ‘I think – I’m not very concerned about the answer to that question any more. I wasn’t looking at the data in the appropriate light, but I’ve caught up now. I know as much as I need to know about that subject. I do have another question, though. But first you need some more information from me.’

 

‘Are you giving me an extra turn?’ Jo asks, striving for humour.

 

‘No. You won’t be asking me anything. I’ll talk, you’ll listen.’

 

‘So pretty much just a normal conversation between us, then.’

 

Sherlock looks pained. ‘Is it like that?’

 

Oh, damn her, damn her for looking hurt, for making Jo be serious when she’s trying to be anything but. ‘No, no, it isn’t,’ Jo says. ‘If – if it bothered me I’d say. I’d do something about it. You’re amazing. I like hearing you talk.’ Oh God, what the hell is she saying? Was it really necessary to add that?

 

Sherlock traces a pattern on the sofa with her finger. Jo watches her fingertip slide over the material, slender and precise, and not helping. Sherlock says, ‘You looked – when you were talking about your brother and clubbing, you said he thought you were too easy to read to be trusted to dissimulate when necessary, and while explaining this you became uncomfortable. You were thinking of me, and what I said when I came home two months ago.’

 

Jo doesn’t deny it. It would be pointless. She only says: ‘When I asked why you hadn’t brought me with you.’

 

‘Yes, that.’ Sherlock looks annoyed now, of all things. ‘I said it wouldn’t have worked.’

 

‘And never explained why,’ Jo agrees, more than annoyed herself, now.

 

‘But you assumed it was because I didn’t trust you,’ Sherlock says. Jo doesn’t answer this, so Sherlock just keeps talking. ‘I hadn’t realised you were thinking that way. I thought you knew. Think of the practicalities, Jo. If you’d just disappeared, run off and left England, everyone would have known something was up. Moran and his associates would have traced you and killed you.’

 

‘You got away,’ Jo challenges.

 

‘By pretending to be _dead_ ,’ Sherlock says. ‘It would have been something of a coincidence for you to die immediately afterwards.’

 

‘We could have made it linked,’ Jo says. She fidgets. ‘Another suicide.’

 

‘Yes, yes, I went through all this in my head at the time,’ Sherlock says, impatient. ‘Assuming they swallowed that you killed yourself over me, that would only have led to problems later.’

 

‘How?’ Jo demands.

 

Sherlock looks at the floor. ‘I don’t think you understand what it was like,’ she says. ‘The quarters were cramped even for one, wherever I was. You would have been in hiding with me, stuck with me constantly. You wouldn’t have been able to go to a boyfriend’s or “get some air” whenever I annoyed you. I estimated that you’d last a month or two at best and then want to leave. And you’d be legally dead, and unable to return home without causing a media frenzy and putting yourself in grave danger. You’d be trapped. I couldn’t do that to you.’

 

Jo gapes at her. ‘And you just made this decision for me. Without asking.’

 

Sherlock blinks. ‘It just seemed obvious,’ she says. ‘It didn’t occur to me that you’d feel differently.’ When, after a long moment, Jo says nothing, Sherlock snaps. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ she says, her voice low but unsteady. ‘Can you seriously not – you don’t really think I didn’t want you there?’

 

Jo still doesn’t answer. Sherlock’s hands curl into fists. ‘I would have given anything – but – I did what I did to keep you safe, and I wasn’t going to throw it all away and put you in more danger out of selfishness.’

 

‘You can’t do that,’ Jo tells her. She might be furious, or she might be something else; not knowing is disorienting. ‘You cannot, Sherlock. No more unilateral decisions.’

 

Sherlock nods. Her face is an odd mix of fear and defiance and hope. Jo, out of options, out of ideas, out of things to say, pushes herself forwards in one desperate motion, connects with Sherlock a little harder than intended, and, before there’s time to reconsider, kisses her.

 

Sherlock’s hands move unexpectedly fast, gripping Jo painfully hard by the shoulders. Jo barely notices, because Sherlock is also kissing back, drunkenly clumsy but fiercely intent.

 

Jo pulls back a moment later just to _look_ , to see Sherlock’s hair mussed (Jo’s fingers ended up in it at some point), lips wet, eyes more liquid than ever. ‘God,’ Jo breathes.

 

‘I was going to ask,’ Sherlock says, ‘for my turn, I was going to ask you: if you could have anything right now, anything you wanted –‘

 

Jo cuts her off by kissing her again, and is almost undone by Sherlock’s gasp against her. When she stops again it’s to say: ‘Sherlock, you know this isn’t settled, it’s not – if you don’t know that I would have gone with you anywhere – we need to talk about this a lot more, all right, but – just not now.’

 

‘Touch me,’ Sherlock says, and the simplicity of the request – because it is a request, even though it’s phrased like a command – makes Jo’s breath catch.

 

But she shakes her head. ‘We’re drunk,’ she says. ‘I don’t want – not now. Just – come to bed with me? In the morning –‘

 

She doesn’t finish the sentence, but Sherlock is already nodding hard.


	2. Chapter 2

Jo wakes before it’s light and finds herself boiling hot. It takes a moment to realise why: Sherlock’s long frame is sprawled across her chest, Sherlock diagonal across the bed with her head tucked under Jo’s chin, hair everywhere.

 

It’s lovely, more than that, but in the middle of a week-long July heatwave it’s hard to focus on sentiment over discomfort. Jo’s debating losing the closeness versus getting heatstroke when Sherlock moves of her own accord, stirring into wakefulness.

 

She sits up, moving off Jo’s body, and twists round to make eye contact. ‘You said we could have sex in the morning,’ she says, without preamble.

 

Jo’s taken aback for a moment; then she starts giggling. Sherlock looks like she doesn’t know whether to join in or be hurt. ‘It’s not morning yet. And technically I didn’t actually say that,’ Jo points out. Sherlock’s expression drifts fractionally closer to ‘hurt’ at this, so Jo adds, ‘But yes, you have correctly deduced what I meant, and we can definitely have sex now.’

 

‘Good,’ Sherlock says. ‘And it’s far too hot to be dressed; you should stop it.’

 

Jo smiles and pulls off the t-shirt, wallows in Sherlock’s hot steady gaze as it takes in Jo’s body for seconds upon seconds.

 

When Sherlock shows no signs of moving, Jo reaches out to tug at her pyjama top. ‘You too,’ she says.

 

Sherlock strips quickly, tossing her clothes down to Jo’s bedroom floor. Naked, she is predictably breathtaking, and Jo lets it show on her face. Sherlock looks endearingly pleased with herself, and it is impossible to wait any longer to touch her.

 

Jo starts slowly, every tiny movement taking on a disproportionate amount of importance. Three right-hand fingers stroking down Sherlock’s neck (and they weren’t supposed to be checking her pulse again, not at first, but when they do Sherlock tolerates it without comment). Jo’s left hand buries itself in Sherlock’s hair, plays with it. Sherlock’s hands both move now, come up to smooth over Jo’s sides. It should feel agonising, this pace, but it doesn’t. Perhaps because they need it, Jo thinks: both of them need it drummed into their heads that they have time now to discover each other, as much time as they need. No one is going anywhere, ever again. If Sherlock doesn’t know that yet, Jo is going to convey it to her in every way she knows how.

 

Incentive to speed up arrives before too long, however, in the form of Sherlock’s bitten-off moan when Jo’s hand sweeps across her nipple. It’s a tease of a touch, exploratory rather than definite. Jo’s barely started. So she pauses and raises her eyebrows, and Sherlock says, defensive, ‘I’m sensitive there.’

 

Jo tries another gentle brush and gets a little gasp in return. ‘Extremely sensitive,’ she comments, and her tongue comes out to touch her lips of its own accord, her mind already vibrant with possibilities.

 

‘Yes,’ Sherlock says. ‘Apparently even more so with you.’ Her voice is strained, gorgeous. ‘Are you going to do something about it?’

 

Jo does. She kisses one nipple, then the other, as lightly as she dares. Sherlock squirms, and tilts her head back into the pillows. Jo’s kisses become richer and longer: she sucks softly for a moment on the right nipple, then circles it with her tongue before switching to the other. Then she repeats. Sherlock’s breathing is very heavy now, and Jo knows this is verging on cruel, this highly localised and consistent, insistent pressure. But Sherlock doesn’t appear to be complaining, and God, her face – flushed, eyes shut – Jo needs more of this. She can’t imagine that she’ll ever get enough.

 

Her hands come up to join in, and Jo has no idea how long she’s wanted to touch Sherlock like this, but she can barely remember not wanting it. She keeps her mouth focused on Sherlock’s nipples while her hands indulge themselves everywhere else, stroking thighs and sides and finally returning to cup Sherlock’s breasts. The extra stimulation draws another moan out of Sherlock. Jo touches herself, has to, and finds herself dripping. When her hand slips over to Sherlock, she’s in much the same state.

 

They aren’t talking much. Words would take a very great effort now, and anyway, they aren’t necessary. Later, Jo knows, they will be; there are months – years – worth of unsaid things to drag out into the open. But now all their communication is physical, and that feels right for right now. Jo tries not to read things into the interaction between their bodies, but Sherlock’s hands alternate between skimming Jo’s body as if desperate to touch every inch of it, and clinging to her arms as if afraid she’ll vanish, and it’s impossible not to be affected by that.

 

Jo realises that she’s licking her lips again, and concludes that she’s waited long enough to taste Sherlock’s wetness. She moves down the bed and hears Sherlock’s breath catch.

 

Once down there, though, Jo finds that she doesn’t want to rush this. The scent is intoxicating, and the slick shine against Sherlock’s pale and oddly fragile-looking skin is – beautiful, really, though she’d never say so out loud. She’s reaching out to touch before she realises she’s doing it, running one finger across Sherlock’s vulva, downwards across the slit.

 

Sherlock’s hips lift in an involuntary request for more contact, and Jo obliges her by slipping the finger inside, just a centimetre. She twists it slowly without moving it any further in, and Sherlock’s hips buck again. ‘Jo,’ Sherlock says, actually pleading. And Jo had thought she couldn’t possibly be any more turned on.

 

‘All right,’ she says. ‘All right, yes.’ She lifts her hand away and brings her hand even closer, till her lips are touching Sherlock’s entrance, completely still. Sherlock’s pubic hair is rough, and tickling Jo’s face slightly, but it’s not unpleasant. She moves her face up and then down, slowly, feeling her mouth slide over Sherlock, becoming slippery. She wants to bury herself inside Sherlock, wants to hold her and never let her go, wants to swallow her, wants to open her up. Wants to fuck her.

 

Sherlock rests a hand on Jo’s head, a hint rather than a push. Jo smiles, and wonders if Sherlock can feel it. Sherlock’s legs are splayed wide; she’s so open, offering herself up. When the thought of fucking Sherlock entered Jo’s head in the past (to be instantly pushed away) it was never like this. If she’d let herself imagine it, she would have imagined sex that was grudging and fraught with unnamed tensions. Nothing like this: like touching each other is more natural than not touching, like they should always have been doing this. 

 

Jo licks. She wants her tongue everywhere and for a minute it’s the messiest and least controlled head she’s ever given. It’s about her, not Sherlock, about taking in as much of Sherlock as she can. Sherlock seems to know (of course she knows), reaching down to hold herself open and let Jo take.

 

Jo thanks her by moving up to focus attention on Sherlock’s clit, mouthing it gently at first and then running her tongue around it, avoiding direct contact until Sherlock’s hips start thrusting again, repeatedly this time. Then Jo goes for it, gives Sherlock everything she can, till Sherlock comes hard, getting impossibly wetter and making noises that’ll be turning Jo on every time she remembers them for months.

 

Jo sits up and reaches for the tissues on her bedside table, but Sherlock stops her. Jo looks up, surprised, and finds Sherlock reaching out to touch her mouth, running fingers over her lips. ‘Gathering data?’ Jo asks.

 

Sherlock’s flushed and sweaty and somehow more stunning than ever. She flushes a little deeper at this question. ‘That too,’ she says. ‘Not the primary – um. I think I just like seeing myself on you. I think I like it a lot, actually. I’m not sure why.’

 

Sherlock never ums. Jo tries and fails to hold back smugness. ‘Possessiveness,’ she suggests. ‘I’m covered in you, I’m marked, yours.’

 

Saying the words sends arousal surging through her, and it only intensifies when Sherlock gulps and then says, ‘Yes, God, yes, that.’

 

‘You could – er, you could try kissing me like this, if you want,’ Jo says uncertainly. ‘A lot of people don’t like it, but…you’d taste yourself and me together, if that’s something…’

 

She doesn’t get to finish the sentence, because Sherlock takes her up on it, pushing herself up on drowsy limbs to reach. The kiss is a careful, considering one, and brief. Sherlock pulls back. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I like that a great deal. Very irrational, really, but I suppose that goes with the area.’

 

Jo laughs, wraps her arms around Sherlock simply because she can, kisses her again, deeper this time.

 

Sherlock’s hand snakes down to investigate Jo’s inner thighs, just this side of ticklish. She keeps rubbing and stroking without ever moving up and in till Jo’s in bits. She’s about to beg when Sherlock does move, pushes two fingers into Jo’s vagina up to the knuckle and then begins to piston them in and out. There’s a rhythm here but it’s unreliable, changing pace just when Jo thinks she’s got a handle on it. Jo suspects that it belongs to a piece of music and Sherlock’s effectively playing it on her. The idea is much hotter than it should be. Though with Sherlock touching her like this everything is hot, especially when Sherlock’s head swoops down to begin more kissing.

 

‘Is this enough?’ Sherlock stops kissing to ask. ‘Can you come from this?’

 

‘Don’t – don’t know,’ Jo says, head twisting in search of more kisses. ‘It’s more than – nothing’s enough – but anything, you could – anything.’

 

Jo strains for further words, more intelligible ones, but then Sherlock’s other hand comes into play and Jo throws her head back with a gasp. It doesn’t matter anyway, because Sherlock is clearly enjoying her incoherence immensely, and can work out what Jo needs without help.

 

And what she needs is this: Sherlock, kissing, finger-fucking, and Sherlock’s free hand everywhere, touching Jo’s clit till she’s right on the edge and then moving up to play with her breasts, back down again, alternating till Jo is beyond thought as well as speech.

 

When she comes she feels it in her whole body, and she looks up to see Sherlock watching her with an expression Jo’s never seen before but wants to see again and again. Like wonder without surprise, like: you are as beautiful as I should have expected but didn’t.

 

They don’t talk for a while. Jo curls against Sherlock and lets herself be held. Eventually, Sherlock says, ‘We should do that often.’

 

‘Seconded,’ Jo replies. ‘All in favour? Good, motion carried.’

 

Sherlock laughs out loud, kisses Jo hard. Jo kisses back for a minute, but then has to break away to yawn.

 

Sherlock smiles, and kisses Jo’s forehead, the tenderest of her kisses yet. ‘Sleep,’ she says. ‘It’s still the middle of the night. You can kiss me in the morning.’

 

Sherlock does not say, I’ll still be here. Jo would recoil from that, would feel snappish, want to say that obviously she knows that. But she needs to hear it said, nevertheless. Sherlock is a genius, and it isn’t surprising that she’s found a way to say it without saying it, but Jo has to kiss her once more for it anyway. When she feels another yawn approaching, she stops, repays Sherlock’s forehead kiss, and says, ‘Don’t worry, I plan to.’

 

‘And the morning after that?’ Sherlock asks. She sounds flippant now, but Jo’s well aware she’s anything but.

 

‘Repeat ad infinitum,’ Jo tells her. ‘Or until one of us gets ourselves killed for real, at any rate.’

 

‘Don’t,’ Sherlock says, pulling her closer. ‘I intend to try very hard to prevent that outcome till we’re at least in our eighties. Do you anticipate that we’ll still be kissing then?’

 

‘If you can get us both to eighty, I think that’s an achievement that’ll deserve a lot of kisses. We might have to consider upping the frequency if we get that far.’

 

Sherlock laughs, and these laughs of sheer joy are something Jo could definitely get used to hearing. Sherlock hasn’t laughed much since she came back till tonight, and they’ve generally been small, slightly bitter laughs. Under her breath, too, not meant to be shared. This laugh is wide open, draws Jo right in and has her laughing too.

 

‘That’s a deal, then?’ Sherlock says. ‘Any morning on which neither of us is dead, you’ll kiss me.’

 

Jo grips Sherlock’s hand, and shakes it firmly. ‘Deal,’ she says.

 

She forgets to let go of Sherlock's hand, afterwards. Their fingers are still interlocked when she falls asleep. Sherlock's breath warms her cheek, and Jo knows for certain that when she wakes she'll wake to that warmth edging nearer, becoming touch, becoming a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this comes from the poem 'Luing' by Don Paterson:
> 
> When the day comes, as the day surely must,  
> when it is asked of you, and you refuse  
> to take that lover's wound again, that cup  
> of emptiness that is our one completion,
> 
> I'd say go here, maybe, to our unsung  
> innermost isle: Kilda's antithesis,  
> yet still with its own tiny stubborn anthem,  
> its yellow milkwort and its stunted kye.
> 
> Leaving the motherland by a two-car raft,  
> the littlest of the fleet, you cross the minch  
> to find yourself, if anything, now deeper  
> in her arms than ever – sharing her breath,
> 
> watching the red vans sliding silently  
> between the hills. In such intimate exile,  
> who'd believe the burn behind the house  
> the straitened ocean written on the map?
> 
> Here, beside the fordable Atlantic,  
> reborn into a secret candidacy,  
> the fontanelles reopen one by one  
> in the palms, then the breastbone and the brow,
> 
> aching at the shearwater's wail, the rowan  
> that falls beyond all seasons. One morning  
> you hover on the threshold, knowing for certain  
> the first touch of the light will finish you.
> 
> *
> 
> In case anyone's interested, there's a recording at the [Poetry Archive](http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=6174) of the poet reading it, very beautifully, and talking a bit about it as well - I think I probably had some of that in my head when I was writing the fic too.


End file.
